Chapter Text
The house next door had been empty since Sef turned nine the year before. The previous owners—an elderly woman and her sixteen cats, one small dog and four birds—had not exactly been evicted but some small squadron of younger family had come along and forcibly removed her (and her horde of animals). Sef had stood on the front porch for the whole duration of the ordeal, his small-slim face caught in white-spotted horror as the woman cried hysterically about Paris. (Is Paris her cat, Dad? Sef asked him. And Altair had been stuck on the porch trying to figure out the best way to explain that Mrs. Grabble that had lived next door Sef’s whole life had started losing track of things. It hadn’t been the best conversation, but far from the worst.)
In the first months, when the prospective buyers were still plentiful and interest was high, Sef had sat on the front porch swing with a litter of books at his side and his eyes like hawk-eyes trying to figure out who was going to buy the place.
“Why do you care so much?” Darim had demanded in spring when the grass had to be mowed and the flower beds had to be tended. Darim was fourteen-and-foolish (possessed of all the base needs of a boy on the verge of manhood) but he needed nothing so much as he needed an excuse to anger his baby brother. “Maybe nobody will buy it, who cares?”
“Shut up,” Sef said. He cared-because-he-did. The house deserved to have someone to live in it.
Altair took up sitting next to Sef in the summer, didn’t read books but sometimes the newspaper and made lists about things that he needed to get done. (Always lists, so many lists, lists of lists that needed listing, the never ending obligation of fatherhood.)
“Someone’s going to move in, Dad,” Sef told him one evening when the fireflies were out looking for lovers and the street had gone quiet save for the occasional car. He was yawning-and-tired, already in his pajamas with another half-finished book laying in his lap with his finger like a bookmark holding his place.
“Sure,” Altair agreed.
At some point, Sef had started planting flowers in the long-abandoned flower bed around the tree in the empty houses’ front yard. And he’d convinced Darim (through cunning, threats or bribes) to mow the grass. Altair knew and said nothing.
Fall came with bitter wind and drove away most of the lingering interest in the house. School dragged Sef away from his sentry position on the front porch but he came home every day with wide-wide-eyes looking for a ‘Sold’ sign and found a persistently ‘For Sale’ in its place.
“Why won’t anyone buy it?” Sef demanded in the winter when the cold had moved him from the front porch to a window seat. It was a curious obsession for a boy his age to have and Darim liked to give Altair long-looks of ‘aren’t you going to fix this’ when he thought Sef wasn’t looking.
“It probably smells like cat box,” Darim said. “You saw how many animals they took out of that place.” It dissolved into a petty argument between them (much the same as it always did) before Altair waved his hand to silence them all and they ate dinner in unhappy quiet.
It was spring again, just after Sef turned ten and was on the verge of giving up looking out for the house, when the house finally found someone to live in it.
The new neighbors came on a Friday morning when the sky ripped open and poured. Altair was out on the porch (he’d promised Sef he’d keep a look out for the neighbors while he was at school) when the moving van pulled up. It was a short truck, one of those rent-me things, that the (obviously inexperienced) driver parked at the curb with a shuddering groan. The driver’s side door opened and a man walked around the front of the truck to pull open the passenger side and after a long moment of struggle freed a toddler wearing a big yellow raincoat.
Altair watched them walk up the modest slope of the front yard, the toddler squinting out from under the wide-round hood framing his (her? Far too young to tell with any authority) face and holding a sippy cup out to the side to collect rain drops. The man set the child down on the porch and gently nudged him until his back was against the house. After a brief struggle with the keys, the front door opened.
Altair sipped his tea and weighed the merits of offering his help. If his sons had been there, he would have sent them to help because humility and good-will were important things that neither of them possessed in any quantity. It was just that the rain was thick and constant and Altair’s tea was hot and delicious. But the toddler on the porch toddled forward and leaned through the wide open gaps in the railing and got his head soaked in the hard sheet of water that overflowed from the clogged gutters. His squealing objection and the haphazard way his small arms went out to the side ineffectively to save himself (while amusing at some distance) seemed to be his conscience exerting control over the physical world.
Help the man his conscience said. Don’t you wish someone had helped you?.
So he put his tea down and took his jacket off, threw it back on the swing and headed out into the chill of the rain, across his yard and driveway, into the swampy-wet yard of his new neighbor and stood politely at the bottom of the steps looking up at the man (young man even) extracting this child from the porch railing. “I’m Altair,” he said with (his best attempt at) a smile, “I live there. Want help?”
The (young) man set the (boy? Had to be a boy) down by the door and pushed him inward toward the darkened interior of the house while he thought over the offer. He had taken off the slick black jacket he was wearing when he walked up to the house and that left him with a white-shirt with indistinct gray lettering (already wet on the shoulders). His black hair was soaked to his head already and while his pride clearly wanted to tell Altair to leave him the hell alone, his toddler (already walking straight back into the rain) defeated him. “I’m Malik,” he said as he grabbed the child by the arm to keep him out of the rain. “This is Tazim.” Then, “the forecast said there was a five percent chance of rain today.”
Altair looked up and squinted into the fat drops of rain that were thick enough to drown a man and then back at Malik. “Looks like they were a little wrong. When do you have to return the truck? My oldest son should be home in about an hour and a half if you can wait that long we’d have three times the arms and the rain might stop.”
“I have it all day,” Malik said. But he was far from ready to commit to accepting help.
“You could come to my house, it’s warm, dry, has food and furniture,” Altair said. He nodded at the boy who had slipped his father’s grasp (again) and was crouching at the top of the stairs banging his cup against the puddles. “I’ve been where you are, I didn’t want anyone helping either. I get it, no pressure, but the offer is there if you want it.”
Malik looked at the pitiful emptiness of the house then at his son as Tazim tipped his head and let the gray runoff from the gutters run across his face and into his gaping-open mouth. There was a high-whistle of pronounced misery. “Yeah, that sounds better than this.” Malik said. He ducked forward to get his son and straightened up again while the boy wailed in objection to being saved from certain death by gutter-water.
--
By the time Malik reached his awkward-neighbor’s equally small house the rain had soaked through his jeans and left him a shivering mess of limbs. Tazim didn’t seem to notice or care how hard it was raining because he only barely stood obediently while Malik stripped off his jacket and shoes (to keep from sullying the pristine cleanliness of this stranger’s house). Then he was running for his life, ducking straight out of the small open area with the plastic bins for shoes and hooks for jackets to the nearest furniture. He flung himself onto the couch and made himself right at home.
“How old?” Altair asked from the side. He had taken his shirt off on the porch and was wringing it out by twisting it and stretching it as far as he could manage. His pants—something sturdy and serviceable but not jeans—were soaked through and sticking to his thighs. Malik was only dimly aware that he was staring at his neighbor’s naked belly for a half-breath too long. “You don’t have to worry about making a mess,” Altair said. To prove this point he chucked his shirt into one of the shoe buckets and stooped to untie his boots.
“He’s sixteen months,” Malik said finally.
“You just get him?” Altair stepped out of his boots, left them out on the porch and peeled his socks off to drop them where they landed. Then he ducked in through the small space that Malik left for him to scoot through (staring, dumb-founded, stupidly). “Can he watch TV? I’ve got a couple of cartoon channels.”
“Yeah,” Malik said. He was glad (at least) for the reprieve of not being confronted with Altair’s well-defined abs or the way the veins on his arms stood out under his skin just enough to draw attention. He shook his head and made a point not to look at his back. Instead he pulled his own (outer) shirt off and put it on the porch over a plastic chair and kicked his shoes off next to Altair’s. “No, I’ve had him since birth,” Malik said. “Just, this is our first attempt at living independently. My parents don’t think I’ll make it.” He ran his hand through his hair and a whole waterfall slid down the back of his neck.
Altair was looking-over-his-shoulder at him with a half-grin. “I have been there,” he said. He motioned at the picture on the wall by the door. “My boys. Their Mom moved away when the little one was six months, the older one was…” He took a second to think it over as he grabbed a blanket off a chair and threw it over Tazim who accepted it with some sort of gratitude. “Five.”
“I can’t imagine having two of them,” Malik said. Then, standing just inside of the closed door with water sticking his jeans to his legs and his undershirt soaked to his skin in such a way that he might as well been naked, he simply ran out of things to say.
Altair (an indefinable number of years older than him) seemed to realize it and motioned toward the room just beyond the living room. “Thirsty?”
No. Malik followed him, though, and accepted a seat on one of the old wooden chairs around the dining room table that afforded him a good view of his son and the rented truck he’d managed to park by the curb. The rain, not content to be just a soaking, cold affair, started howling with a driving wind. “I sincerely hope this is not an omen.”
Altair made a vague noise of amusement from the side. He was drinking a glass of water, carrying a fresh shirt (thankfully) but he ducked low enough to see the sheets of rain as they made a swamp out of the front yard. “It looks grim,” he said agreeably. “Could have been worse, though. You could have moved in while the shrew across the street was weeding her garden. Her husband was a detective and she thinks that everyone the street is most likely a criminal of one kind or another.”
“Why?”
“I imagine she just doesn’t have anything better to do since he died. She tried to convince me that Darim—my oldest—was dealing drugs last year. She’s a pest.” He set his glass down and pulled his shirt on. That much was a relief, not having to focus on not looking at him. Altair picked his glass up again to take another drink once he had straightened the shirt on his chest. “How old are you?”
“Twenty two,” Malik said. Or, as his mother frequently wailed, ‘just a baby! You’re a baby, just a baby!’ Malik was not under the same mistaken notion that he was an infant (having had been responsible for the primary care of an infant now) but she couldn’t be convinced he was an adult.
“Twenty two?” Altair repeated, “you bought a house at twenty two?”
Malik shrugged, looked at the truck in the rain. Tazim had gotten bored at a commercial and wandered over to look out the window with him. His tiny fingers against the damp glass and his nose and mouth pressed full against it with wide-open amazement. “As if buying a house is a stupid investment just because I’m young. If I don’t like this house, I can sell it and find another. Or I can rent it out and find another house.”
“Yeah I don’t care about that,” Altair said. His hand was waving somewhere in the air. He finally pulled a chair out to sit down. “You have a job that pays well enough to buy a house at twenty two, that’s the sort of secret I wished someone had imparted on me.”
Oh. Malik smiled (all nerves) and pulled Tazim away from the window before he could start licking it. “Uh, my family owns some stores. I work in the finance department. I was kind of specifically raised to work in the finance department.”
“I bet that made you popular with the ladies.” Altair looked at the clock hanging over the open doorway into the kitchen. He frowned at it as if it were annoying to him for just existing and then looked at Tazim as he crawled into Malik’s lap and tried to get up onto the table to mess with the salt and pepper shakers sitting in the middle. “I remember that age. You feel like it’s never going to end and then the next day they’re walking around shirtless to show off their chest hair.”
Malik laughed and Altair smiled.
--
Darim returned from his (half) day of school soaked to the bone with a foul frown on his face and wet stomp of socks across carpet. He was mouth-open complaining about his bus driver and the arbitrary laws of bus stops when he came to a full stand-still just to the side of the table. He didn’t look at Malik (clearly the least interesting thing to see) but at Tazim who was sitting on a stack of books eating (or doing a credible imitation of it) macaroni and cheese by the fistful. His fluffy dark hair had dried into curls and his precious baby’s smile trained itself on Darim with all the sparkle of love at first sight.
“Malik, this is my son Darim. Darim this is Malik and Tazim.”
Darim smiled politely enough but the first thing he said was, “oh man. You’re going to make me help.” Then he was hands-in-the-air pushing his way into the kitchen complaining about rain and needing something to eat. At fifteen, the boy was nearly as tall as Altair but not as compact. His body was shaped in much the same way that Maria’s father had been shaped, all puffed out in the chest with a healthy bulk to his arms and legs that made him look like a full-sized person and not the skin-and-bones slimness that Sef had inherited.
“It’ll go faster with more people helping,” Altair said.
“That must be why you were nice enough to wait for me,” Darim said. He was frowning as he ate the leftovers out of the pan with a spoon. When the pan was scraped clean he went to get his shoes and jacket back on.
“He’s excited to help,” Altair said to Malik who had endured this scene with nonjudgmental silence. “Shall we?”
The three of them were back out in the rain with Tazim unhappily caged into his new house (courtesy of the baby gate Altair had found in a closet). The moving van, while not the largest possible size, was stuff full of more things that anyone might have guessed could fit into such a compact space. Darim (mouthy and unpleasant) had been raised to work fast and wordlessly. He took to the task of carting boxes and bags and furniture up to the porch without delay. Malik was given the task of moving things over the gate and dropping them into the empty interior of his home. Altair carried the breakable and heavy things that Darim worked around.
“I don’t feel like I’m doing enough,” Malik said when Altair handed him the pieces of a crib over the baby gate. Tazim was still screaming his displeasure while he shook the gate holding him in place.
“You’re doing the lion’s share,” Altair assured him.
Sef trailed in about the time Darim was standing (dripping wet) in the interior of the van going: “Dad, we have to move the stupid mattresses before we can get the rest of the boxes out. And this couch?” he motioned at it like it offended him on a spiritual level. “It weighs like six hundred pounds. And it’s ugly.”
“Someone moved in?” Sef asked. He was wearing his rain jacket (the smarter brother, certainly) with a gleeful grin on his face. He pulled himself up into the van to join them in appraising what was left to move. “Who is it? Do they have kids?”
“It’s a guy,” Darim said. “Dad wants to bone him.”
Altair slapped Darim on the arm. “Don’t talk like that.”
“It’s true,” Darim said back defiantly. He looked right at Sef’s confused half-smile. “It’s a guy and a baby. And Dad made them lunch and now we have to move all this crap just because..” But he looked back at Altair before he finished the sentence and settled for making a random motion with his hand. “Sef can watch the kid. Sef likes kids.”
Altair rubbed his hands through his wet hair and reached over to grab another box (marked kitchen) to shove into Darim’s unhappy arms. “Take this up there. Try not to embarrass yourself while you do it.”
Sef picked up a sack and went over to scoot off the wet edge of the van to the ground. He lugged it up to the house and stopped just in front of Malik to introduce himself as the (nicer, smarter, sweeter, generally more polite) younger brother. If he invited himself to baby-sit the shrieking terror while Malik assisted Altair with the heaviest furniture, he must have done it with the single most sincere face ever because Malik smiled and motioned him inside.
Then Malik was crossing the swampy front yard to where Altair was standing just out of the rain at the end of the van. “That is your kid, right? He looked like you.”
“Yes,” Altair said. Then they turned their attention back to the problem at hand, the mattress and box spring, the extraneous boxes that were lodged behind them, the couch (that weighed six hundred pounds) and the three chairs that were stacked up the ceiling in the corner. “I have a tarp,” Altair said.
Darim, who had been halfway to getting in the van and out of the rain at that exact moment, let out an unholy groan and dropped back to the ground again. He went without protest to the shed in the backyard to dig the tarp out and returned with it. His face was just murderous with bad attitude but his face was breaking out in those pink spots that preceded seasonal colds and weeks of misery.
“Go take a shower and find something for lunch,” Altair said when he took the tarp. “For you and Sef.”
Darim was so grateful to be relieved of duty that he did not even protest having to cater to his baby brother. He ran to their house and stripped out of his sopping wet clothes on the porch, leaving even his pants behind in a puddle before he went in and slammed the door.
Malik was making that neutral face that most people who witnessed Darim at his worst made. It didn’t last very long because they were carrying heavy-as-hell furniture through the rain and trying to wedge it in a front door and over a baby gate.
“Dad,” Sef said when they were standing outside of the front door with the couch and no ideas about how to get it in, “move the gate. I’ve got Tazim. We found some of his toys.” And that was one of (but certainly not the only reason) that Altair loved Sef.
They managed to get the stupid couch in after a few tries and were sitting on it cock-eyed in the wide-open doorway of the living room watching Sef and Tazim shoot cars through the obstacle course made out of boxes. Malik was soaked through again, his shirt tight to his skin as his nipples stood out from the chill and his legs sprawled open as he slouched in exhaustion. “I have no idea how I thought I was going to do this by myself,” he said eventually.
“Neither do I,” Altair said. He was cold and wet and on the verge of overstaying his welcome. “And you’re not even finished.” So he picked himself up (so much for a day off) and went out to get the last of the boxes and chairs and the broom that had been hiding under the couch.
“Thank you,” Malik said when the van was empty and the rain was finally reaching a breaking point. “Tell Darim thank you for me?”
“I will.” Altair was at least two inches taller than Malik and it hadn’t made much difference before but it seemed important with the way Malik was leaning against his own doorframe and looking up at him. The scruff on his cheeks was a dark shadow down to his jaw but the dark patch on his chin was clearly purposeful (and somehow attractive). Every single part of him was soaked through, and his hair looked silly flattened to his forehead. It made him look even younger than he was (and wasn’t that a sobering thought). Altair stopped himself from leaning toward Malik and cleared his throat to call Sef. “Well, you know where we are if you need anything.”
Sef was carrying his book bag in one hand with his jacket hanging off his head by the hood. “Dad fixes things,” he said. “Don’t you Dad? He used to be an electrician but now he’s a contractor—he can fix anything.”
Altair smiled and shoved Sef out into the rain. “See you, Malik,” he said.
Malik nodded and turned around to look at the disaster that was his house filled with soggy boxes.
--
Malik made it through returning the truck, picking up his own car, stopping off at a grocery store to get actual food and all the way home before Tazim’s lack of napping became a tornado of hyper screaming and running. It seemed like a fitting end to the whole day.
The rain that had slowed down in the early afternoon was back to monsoon proportions by the time he finished carrying the groceries in. He fed Tazim slices of lunch meat and cheese and mandarin oranges (out of a can) whenever the boy came close enough to the side table where Malik had set his own plate. Then it was dropping the kid in a tub of warm water and letting him get drowsy before putting him in the first piece of clothing he’d found in the bags of their clothes. Tazim slept on the crib mattress next to the couch (that Malik slept on) that was sitting cock-eyed in the doorway.
The alarm on his phone woke him up in the morning to discover Tazim was missing (in the kitchen, sitting on the floor with an open container of yogurt that also worked as finger paint) and that the rain had stopped.
Kadar came over around ten to help him unpack. “Mom is still crying,” he said from the bathroom where he was helpfully stuffing towels into the linen closet. Tazim was sitting on the toilet (or he had been) watching. Malik was in the middle sized bedroom putting the crib together because it had taken half an hour and a roll of paper towels to get that stupid yogurt all cleaned up.
“More or less than she cried when she found out I was having a baby?” Malik shouted back. He tightened the screws on the crib and straightened up to find that the window he was standing next to afforded him a shockingly nice view of Altair’s backyard. Where Altair was currently standing on the square of a back step drinking some kind of hot beverage with his shirt off.
“About the sa—what are you looking at?” Kadar asked. He was carrying Tazim in one arm and a two bags of the kid’s clothes in the other. He snuck over (unnecessarily) to look out the window with Malik and as soon as he realized they were looking at Malik’s brand new half-naked neighbor scoffed loudly in his direction. “You are ridiculous, sir.”
“Shut up, he’ll hear you,” Malik hissed at him.
“Hear you staring at him?” Kadar shouted. But Altair turned his head toward the sound and Kadar ducked out of the way so fast he nearly fell over and took Tazim with him. Malik just took a step backward and glared at his brother. Kadar was laughing. “Maybe curtains should be next.”
“Maybe dismembering your stupid body should be next,” Malik said.
Kadar inched back up to the window. “But he’s old. I mean, he’s a good looking guy but he’s old. Is that his kid?” Tazim was poking the window with one sticky finger. “How old is that kid?”
Malik stood next to his brother (like an idiot) and shrugged. “I don’t know, fourteen? Fifteen?”
“I’m seventeen,” Kadar said flatly. “That man is old enough to be my father. That means he’s too old for you. Stop looking at him, gerontophile.” Then he set Tazim down so he could throw the bags he’d brought with him into the closet where the dresser was sitting in pieces. “I’m serious. Stop. It’s getting disgusting.”
And when Malik didn’t manage to stop looking at Altair (who was just talking to his sour-faced son) Kadar slapped one hand against the window and said, “stop staring at him or I’ll open the window and invite him over for sex and biscuits.”
“I hate you,” Malik said.
Kadar just grinned. “I’m going to put the kitchen together. Where are those drawer things that Mom gave you? I promised I’d make sure they got put on.”
“In one of the kitchen boxes,” Malik said.
By naptime, Malik had put Tazim’s bedroom together (by far the most important room in the house) and the boy snoozed peacefully in his crib listening to his lullabies. Malik and Kadar put the living room together (rug, couch, tables, chair) and sat in the peaceful quiet lamenting the loss of a TV. “Altair has a nice TV,” Malik said. He was sipping tea, slouching into the couch looking at the empty space where the TV would go whenever he got around to getting one.
“I should ask his kid out on a date. Would that be weird?” Kadar said. “You know since he’s only fifteen and I’m seventeen? No wait—you know what’s weird?”
“Shut up,” Malik said. “I can think he’s attractive without having to have sex with him, Kadar.”
Kadar snorted at that notion. “I give you four weeks and if you haven’t had sex with him, I’ll…paint your kitchen.”
“Four weeks?” Malik said, “you think so highly of me. Fine, deal.”
“Fine,” Kadar said. Then he sighed again and moved around on the couch. “Mom really was crying though. I wasn’t going to come help but she shoved me out the door while crying and demanded I help you since you were stupid and stubborn and set on this foolishness.”
“I can’t believe I missed that,” Malik mumbled. “We should finish the kitchen.”
“We should put your bed together.”
“I can sleep on the couch.”
“But can you put the bed together by yourself?” Kadar asked. “You couldn’t put it together by yourself last time.”
“Well if I can’t, my neighbor is a contractor. I’ve been told he can fix anything.”
Kadar made a fake gagging sound before he got to his feet. “But can he paint kitchens, that’s what we need to know.” He was already padding back through the dining room to get to the kitchen.
--
Altair did not hide on the back porch. If it was the last place that his sons looked for him (no matter how often he was found there) that was not his primary intention. The front yard faced the street (and his bitch neighbor) which meant standing around half-asleep with his shirt off was slightly less acceptable. It was his backyard though, shaded on three sides by an overgrowth of bushes that needed to be trimmed. He considered making Darim doing it, weighed that against the knowledge that the boy would make a disaster of it just to spite him, and arrived at no conclusion.
Muffled shouting drew his attention away from the hedges, back across the chain-link fence that separated him from Malik’s yard. The sound seemed to be coming from a window near the back and there was a sudden flutter of movement behind the sun-glare on the window. Darim shoved the back door open with a huff and a sniffle (so running through the rain had not been a great idea).
“What are you doing out here?” Darim asked.
“Hiding,” Altair said.
Darim frowned at him. His nose was pink around the edges and his eyes had that decidedly weak look to them that meant he was going to get a cold. “Are you working today? You said yesterday you weren’t sure and I need to know because I was going to invite my friends over.”
“You can’t have friends over when I’m not here,” Altair said. It was a practical policy to have considering Darim came into existence during an unsupervised afternoon of impractical laziness. The poor kid had never stood a chance at attaining the sexual ignorance that caused his own existence because Altair had no desire to be a grandfather before he was thirty-five.
“Which is why I need to know,” Darim said ve-rrrr-y-sl-ooo-wly. His attention was drawn away from Altair but a rattle at the neighbor’s window and his sour little expression deepened as he sighed. “The neighbor is staring at you, put a shirt on.”
Altair smiled.
Darim shook his head in distaste. “Gross. Are you working?”
“I have a consultation,” he said. “I’ll be back around two. If those hedges are trimmed down to fence level and your brother is still in one piece when I get back, you can invite your friends over.”
Darim took this offer with all the grace a fifteen year old boy was capable of having. He scoffed, threw his arms around in objection and began complaining immediately about the hours of his life and Sef never had to and stomped his way back into the house to hide in his room.
Altair took a sip of his coffee and thought fondly of time machines.
--
Malik unleashed Tazim in the front yard (to fall in mud, mostly) after Kadar was gone and the inside of the house seemed too intimidating to bear a moment longer. The boy was a grinning madman dashing around the grass looking for puddles to flop into. Malik sat on the front steps (in need of a fresh coat) and watched his son chasing whatever he thought he’d found.
The neighbor boys (Darim and Sef, he was reasonably sure) were carrying branches out toward the curb, stacking them at the end of their yard. The smaller one was shouting, “but I don’t want to listen to your stupid friends!”
“Then find your own!” Darim shouted back. “Dad said they could come over and they are and that’s it.”
Sef threw the branches he had been carrying down in the middle of the front yard. His angry face was pink all across his cheeks and was half-turning to run back to the house when Tazim (with a wild shriek of joy) took off charging toward him. Malik was on his feet in an instant but the chubby-legged toddler was fast enough to throw himself (mud and all) into Sef. His little fingers (dripping dirt) were up over his head as he coiled them inward over and over.
“Sorry,” Malik said. He pulled Tazim back and the boy struggled against his hold to be free. Sef’s pants (at this point) were covered in dirt. The kid himself didn’t seem to care, just smiled at him.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Does he like balls? We have a lot of balls in our shed that we haven’t thrown away. I could throw it with him for a while.”
“What the—Sef!” Darim shouted when he came back from the backyard with another armload of hedge branches. He kicked the dropped pile and threw his own with the others before marching over. “You were supposed to help me.”
“They’re your friends,” Sef snapped at his brother. “I already did what Dad told me to do.” He went on his way with a confident air of victory and Darim glowered after his back.
“You are never having a brother,” Malik whispered to Tazim who was still trying to free himself from Malik’s grasp. He carried the boy back over to his own yard and dropped him in a muddy flower bed and trusted the allure of dirt and worms to keep him busy enough not to run off after his hot neighbor’s grouchy children.
Sef came back, though, carrying a bright red ball with a yellow star on it and enticed Tazim into a game of catch. Malik sat and watched, crept off the porch now and again to help Tazim figure out how to get the ball from under bushes and the car and fetched it once when it rolled into the street. They were still playing when Altair came home—looking harassed in work clothes—and did a double-take to find Sef in his yard.
“Where’s your brother?” Altair shouted at him.
“I don’t know, somewhere,” Sef shouted back. He picked the ball up and smiled at Malik before jogging off toward his dad. Altair was already around the front of his truck before Sef caught up to him, listing off the exciting events of playing catch with toddlers as he went. “He’s a good kid,” was Sef’s ultimate summary when they reached the porch. He dropped the ball and kicked it under the swing before following Altair inside (still talking).
Malik pushed his toes against Tazim’s fat little thigh. “You’re a good kid,” he said. And Tazim slapped another handful of dirt onto the mud cake he was making with a joyful sputter.
--
Darim won the right to invite his friends and Sef immediately invoked his right (as little brother) to be angry about the entire existence of the universe. There was limited door slamming but Altair did end up sitting out on the porch with him while he glowered at a book he wasn’t even pretending to read.
“You can invite your friends tomorrow,” Altair said.
“Nobody will come to our house,” Sef said. “They all want me to go to their houses to play their stupid games and watch their stupid movies.”
This was clearly a problem. Altair put his bare foot against the old wood of the porch and started the swing. It was a tradition as old as Sef, that gentle rocking that had settled him down when he was a squalling infant refusing to be soothed. It wasn’t as effective now as it had been in years past, but it did manage to unwind all of the furious springs caught in Sef’s shoulders and arms. “You like the neighbors?” Altair asked.
“I guess.”
“Maybe you should invite them over for lunch or something tomorrow. Since none of your friends like our boring house.” He could tell himself (all day and night) that he was putting the idea into Sef’s head for his own benefit. The kid thrived on good will and friendships. But he was an honest enough man to know that Sef was very hard to say no to and Altair wanted Malik at his house.
“Yeah,” Sef said. It was not a commitment, really. “Why do his friends have to be stupid?”
Altair rocked the swing and Sef kicked his feet and the question went unanswered. The simple truth was that all fifteen year old boys were stupid, and would remain stupid as long as the world allowed them the luxury. “Think of something to do tomorrow. Stop worrying about your brother.”
--
It was six-thirty-seven, after dinner, before bath, when the knocking on his door interrupted Malik’s attempts to figure out where the hell Kadar had put the dish soap. He’d bashed his fingers in the drawers when the child-safety stops had pulled the stupid thing shut again and all his fingernails felt bruised. His mood was sour and Tazim was clinging to his pant leg with a wild giggle as he walked to the door.
Sef was standing there with his skinny fist raised to knock again. “Hello Mr. Al-Sayf,” he said, “Dad’s making kabobs tomorrow and I wanted to invite you to join us. Do you eat kabobs? We make them with lamb but if you don’t like that we can get something else—chicken or beef or something.” He waved at Tazim who slapped into the mesh of the screen door and objected at the barrier that prevented him from mauling the boy twice in the same day. “He said it’ll be like at four or something. I can come get you whenever we’re ready or you can come over whenever.” And the smile on that kid’s face, the tilt of his head. He was as adorable as a kitten (or puppy) all innocence and joy.
“Okay,” Malik said. “I eat lamb.”
“Oh good,” Sef said happily. “I’ll see you tomorrow!” Then he bounced away.
“See,” Malik said to Tazim’s frowning little face as he watched his new best friend leave. “That is what you need to grow up to be. Not the other one. Be that kid.” Then he pulled Tazim out of the way of the door and closed it. The rest of the evening was a series of routines that ended with his son peacefully sleeping in his new room and Malik standing in his incomplete bedroom looking at boxes.
He dug his computer out and then the modem and router and spent a while setting the internet up, sitting on his unmade bed ignoring the piles and piles of things that needed to be put away.
--
Darim loved kabobs. It had been a strategic decision to make them on the same day Sef invited their new neighbor and his adorable, destructive (all toddlers were) little child to visit. It was an insurance policy against Darim whining (too much) as much an incentive for him to stay and eat with everyone.
“Yeah but, Dad,” Darim was saying from behind him. He was drinking water and stuffing his face with granola bars because he’d been out running circles around the block. The cold that was threatening to drag him under made his voice sound stuffed full of snot. “You’re not interested in him, right?”
“He’s cute.”
“Puppies are cute. Girls are cute. Sef is cute. See how these are all things that you shouldn’t be…you know—attracted to? If something is cute you shouldn’t be inviting it over for kabobs.”
Altair turned away from the cutting board long enough to make sure Darim was being serious. His life might have been a hundred times simpler if his son had inherited his mother’s awful sense of humor. But he was standing there with utter seriousness etched onto every inch of his face and granola stuck at the corners of his mouth. “Do you not like him?”
“I don’t know him,” Darim protested. “Neither do you.”
“But I think it would be nice to get to know him.”
Darim groaned with both hands in the air and his shoulders wilting forward. He managed to regain control of his own muscles before he hit the floor (thank goodness). “Can’t you just go out with Uncle Desmond or something? You know how you tell Sef you’re going to hang out with adult people and Sef thinks you mean going bowling or something but you’re actually going out to have sex. Do that. That is fine.”
“This is a big deal for you,” Altair said.
“Yeah,” Darim said. “This is a big deal for me. So you know—stop standing around shirtless and stuff. It’s weird, Dad.”
Altair made an agreeable nodding motion. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for pointing all this out to me.”
Darim all but did a victory lap around the kitchen before stealing a slice of pepper on his way out of the room. “You’re the best Dad!”
And well, Altair was beholden as a father to answer the door with his shirt unbuttoned when Malik showed up half an hour early with his hand clenched tight around Tazim’s chubby wrist and that look of ‘please save me from toddlers’ look on his face. Malik’s face went from stressed smile to melting concentration as he looked at Altair’s bare chest. “Looks like you’ve been having a great day,” Altair said.
“Yeah,” Malik said to his chest.
Darim was sitting on the couch giving him the stink eye.
--
Sef talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. Malik had learned the history of the Ibn-La’Ahad family, the specifics of Sef’s school year, what Darim wanted to be when he grew up and how Altair had gone from being an electrician to being a contractor (because electricity got boring). He knew that Sef had one Grandmother (on his Mom’s side) and one great-grandmother (still alive-and-kicking, as the saying went). He also knew what they ate for dinner every other Wednesday (Uncle Ezio came over with Italian) and that apparently there was an Uncle Desmond who baby-sat for them sometimes while ‘Dad went bowling’.
“Clear the table,” Altair said about twenty minutes into a nonstop onslaught of information. He had left the table and returned with a beer in all that time, had a second sitting by his empty plate that was gathering condensation while Sef talked-and-talked-and-talked. “Do you want one?”
Yes, yes he did want one. But he was working on living up to his mother’s expectations so he shook his head. Altair gave the bottle back to Sef who took it with him when he went toward the kitchen (still talking). That left them with a spot of quiet. Altair grinned to himself as Sef’s talking echoed around the curve that led to the kitchen.
“Healthy lungs on that one,” Malik said. He looked over at the couch where Tazim had gone whenever food had stopped interesting him and found nothing. “Where is he?”
Altair looked over at the couch, wrinkled up his eyebrows and then tipped his head back over the chair. “Darim!”
“Finally!” was the shout back, “he’s been here for like ten minutes.” He came back in the room with Tazim following along after him. Darim looked less than pleased to be gifted with the boy’s eternal love but Tazim wasn’t smart enough to care when he wasn’t wanted. He was holding a book under one arm and had his fingers wrapped around Darim’s finger. “Pretty sure his diaper is going to explode soon.”
“You could have brought him back,” Malik said. He got up and scooped Tazim up (while he protested).
“No, it’s fine,” Darim said. Then he went back down the short hall to his room.
Tazim tried to roll free of Malik’s arms, spread his fingers out and squeezed them in with a miserable pout on his face. Moving had not brought out the best of Tazim’s temper. The sudden loss of his uncle, grandmother and grandfather’s near-constant presence had left him searching empty rooms and closets for someone to amuse himself with. “I should go,” Malik said.
Sef said, “is it his bedtime?”
“Almost,” Malik said.
Altair stood up and walked him to the door (as if it weren’t clearly visible from where they sat. He opened the door for him when Tazim’s fitful quiet broke into a sound of dire disconcertion. The boy grabbed at the doorframe as he kicked his feet. “Good luck,” Altair said with a sly smile. “Thanks for coming.”
--
Monday sent his sons back to school and Altair back to work, a condition that persisted for days. He worked fourteen straight hours on Thursday and came home to a civil war. Sef was standing in the kitchen throwing things at Darim. Darim was by the sink with the spray hose soaking the floor, himself and his brother while he shouted at him about being a stupid baby.
Altair was covered in drywall, dirt, sweat, and blood. He was most likely going to lose the fingernail on his ring finger and (on top of that) he was starving. He stopped just outside of the growing puddle of water as his two shamefaced sons turned to look at him with equal looks of guilt before pointing at one another and simultaneously shouting about how it was the other’s fault. He turned, said, “clean it up and go to bed,” and went back outside to the porch.
It was dark outside, still warm, and the old swing was welcoming enough to sit in. He looked at his crushed fingernail in the dim light and thought fondly of food. The old wench across the street was out on her porch, squinting around for someone to make up stories about. With the front door open he could listen to the boys arguing inside and the faint swish and clank of the mop.
Malik’s car pulled up (late, late) and he climbed out of it wearing a nice suit and a sour frown. He leaned across the top of his car, “long day?”
“Yup,” Altair said. “Is he asleep?”
“Yeah.” Malik looked into the back window. “Moving sleeping kids should be an Olympic sport.” He closed the door and huffed as he opened the back door. After a long moment, Malik straightened up again with Tazim all slack and sleepy across his shoulder. Altair got out of the swing, stepped off the side of the porch and went over to step up onto Malik’s porch. “Thanks,” Malik said when he handed Altair’s his keys. “Come in,” he said.
Altair agreed if only because Malik had a working sink and he had no desire to deal with his own sons. He went to the kitchen and scrubbed his hands clean, found a paper towel and wrapped it around his freshly bleeding fingernail. Malik came back in the room with his suit jacket off, his tie undone and hanging open around his neck, and his sleeves rolled up. He looked at Altair and his eyebrows went up. “You win,” he conceded. “I thought I had it bad when I had to call my Dad to pick Tazim up at daycare but—that is a lot of blood.”
“It’s nothing,” Altair assured him. “Finance emergency?”
“No,” Malik said with a sigh. “Outbreak of flu at one of the stores, apparently the manager, assistant manager and half the staff are out sick. Lucky me, I got called in to cover. I cannot wait until Kadar is old enough to be taken seriously.” He yanked his fridge open, “have you eaten?”
“No,” Altair said. “Came home and found the boys destroying the kitchen.”
“I can offer you some—” Malik ducked down to move things around inside the fridge and then straightened. “Pizza? Take out Chinese? Anything that delivers?”
“I make a habit out of eating anything I’m offered I do not have to make or pay for,” Altair said. He unwrapped the paper towel long enough to look at the damage, found it still bleeding sluggishly and wrapped it up again. “But you don’t have to. I’m sure the boys made something.”
“I insist,” Malik said. “Pizza’s generally the fastest.” Then he disappeared to find his laptop to order pizza.
--
Altair was covered in filth and it should have been the sort of thing that made him unattractive and slightly less welcome into the house that Malik had to keep clean (by himself). Yet, it was the grime and dirt of a man who spent the entire day building things and it was arousing on that primal level that drove people to find the strongest-fastest mates. Malik didn’t play on procreating (again) but he was willing to let his instincts drive him to that useless goal so long as it took him toward Altair covered in dirt.
Then, again, there was a little knocking on his door and the appearance of the smaller of the two sons. Altair went out on his porch to talk but the screen provided poor cover for the boy’s mumbled apology.
“What happened to your hand?” Sef asked. “I can bring you the first aid kid—do you need to go to the doctor?”
“Its fine,” Altair assured him. “I’ll take care of it when I get home. Go home, go to bed. We’ll talk about it in the morning.” There was a brief scuffle of feet on the porch and Malik tipped back far enough to watch Altair hugging his (frankly tiny) son and ruffling up his hair. Then Sef ran off and Altair was on the porch at the perfect time to get the pizza.
“So it’s just been you since Sef was…six months?” Malik asked when they were sitting around pizza-and-wings. He still didn’t have a TV and there was only so much entertainment that could be had trying to watch a move on his laptop. “How old is he now?”
“Ten,” Altair said. He picked the ground beef off the pizza and ate it before he picked up the slice. “Maria—that’s their Mom—she got accepted at this college and I didn’t want to leave here and we weren’t going to make it in the long run anyway. She’s my best friend, she’s a great person but we weren’t going to get married or live together. College and two kids didn’t fit together in her plans so I kept them and she comes and gets them during school breaks.”
“How old are you?” Malik asked.
“Thirty two.”
Oh-God-that-was-ten years older than him. Malik wasn’t even sure if that made Altair more attractive or less. “Damn,” Malik said, “how old were you Darim was born?”
“Sixteen,” Altair said. He picked up another slice of pizza. “And my Grandmother, who loved me dearly, never once let me forget that I was responsible for his existence and therefore responsible for his care and feeding. Maria and I used to trade off who had to keep him depending on when we had big tests at school or projects. She always gave him to me for finals. He used to fall asleep on my chest while I read like physics and shit to him.”
Malik took a drink of water to keep from lunging bodily at Altair. The man didn’t seem to realize and it was for the best because hormonal impulses could not be attractive at this juncture. “I thought I had it rough. My Mom tried to do everything. I had to fight her off when Tazim was born. I mean, it was nice having her there. I didn’t realize until this week how nice it was, but he’s my son. I want to raise him how I want him raised.”
Altair nodded.
They ate in silence for a moment, and Malik picked at the bits of beef on his pizza. “Do you date though? I haven’t figured that out.”
“Not exactly. One-night stands, this one guy who I had sex with a lot. I’ve got enough hassle keeping up with the kids, running my business and trying to find time to sleep to worry about dating.” He took a long drink of water and set the glass down, winced at his finger and then picked up his pizza again. “What about you?”
“I just can’t figure out how,” Malik said. “I didn’t ever like going and just hanging out somewhere waiting to find people to talk to. I don’t want to do online dating. Tazim attracts women with ease—”
“Woman can smell ‘single father’ on you. Beware.”
“—But I’d rather have a man.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Altair said. “Just stay on good terms with your babysitters. It’s important to stay on good terms with them.” He finished another slice of pizza and flopped back into the couch. “I should go home. I’m exhausted.”
“You look like shit,” Malik agreed. “Your kids are probably waiting for you.”
Altair didn’t look convinced by that but he did get to his feet. “Thank you for the pizza. Feel free to come over whenever.” Then he was shuffling out of the house and Malik was left alone with the faint outline of dirt on the couch where Altair had been sitting and the low-burning arousal in the pit of his stomach.
--
Two weeks later and half-a-dozen visits from Malik (primarily, he assumed, to escape the monotony of having nobody but a toddler to talk to), Altair was putting together a salad while Tazim danced along to a preschool DVD Sef had unearthed two days ago when Darim slapped him on the arm and handed him the phone.
“Mom wants to talk to you,” he said. Then he was leaving again, trying to sneak through the living room without attracting the attention of Tazim who loved nobody (not even his own father) with the intensity that he loved Darim.
Altair put the phone between his shoulder and his ear and scraped the tomato off the cutting board into the salad bowl. Malik was to his side working on hamburgers with a nervous shuffle from the stove to open doorway to look at Tazim. “Yeah,” Altair said.
Maria was eating something (lunch, maybe. He couldn’t remember the difference in their time zones off the top of his head) when she said, “so who’s the hot the new neighbor. I need pictures, Altair. Darim described him as ‘too young’ and ‘kind of grouchy’ and said his kid ‘wouldn’t leave him alone’ but was ‘sort of cute you know for a kid’. Sef said that he was probably from the Middle East and that he ate lamb. I just need to know how accurate that is.”
Altair sighed and pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket. “Malik,” he said. When Malik turned around to look at him he snapped a photo. “Maria wants to know what you look like,” he said by way of explanation. He was thumbing in Maria’s phone number to send her the picture while Malik smiled into the frying pan and Maria scoffed in his ear.
“Are you trying to fuck this guy?” she asked.
“Hold on, the picture is sending,” Altair said. “Currently I’m making a salad.” He tucked his cell back into his pocket and picked up the knife. There was a healthy selection of vegetables still waiting for him to get through. Carrots and celery and something leafy and dark that Sef had decided to like this year. Altair missed spinach, he liked fresh spinach and had no problem eating it.
Maria’s phone made a noise. “Got it—oh my God,” she said. “How old is this guy? This guy is in your kitchen right now? He’s a baby, Altair. He is an honest-to-God baby.”
Altair rolled his eyes. “Have you gotten the tickets for the kids yet? I know how you like to put it off until the very last second but it’d be nice to have some idea when I should deliver them to the airport this time.”
“Hush,” she said, “Are you trying to fuck this guy? I mean, he’s got a nice ass and from what I can tell there’s a very nice shoulder-to-waist ratio going on. Not sure about that thing on his chin.”
Altair snorted. “Plane tickets, Maria.”
“Just answer the question.”
“Yes,” Altair said with a huff. He sliced the celery down the center and chopped it into pieces small enough to escape Darim’s notice. It provided an excellent distraction from Maria making a series of confused noises. “Tickets,” he said again, “departure and arrival dates. These are the things I need to know.”
“But he’s a baby,” Maria said again.
“I’m hanging up on you,” Altair told her. And then he did. His back pocket vibrated a minute later and he ignored it until the salad was finished, Malik announced the hamburgers were done and his two starving children materialized out of nowhere at the sound of food. “Get the booster for Tazim.”
“What did Maria want my picture for?” Malik asked.
Darim was frowning as soon as he heard the question. Sef smiled brightly as a little Christmas tree and Tazim whined after his show being paused across the room. Altair set the salad on the table and said, “the boys were talking about you, she likes to know the people they hang out with. If you don’t mind I’d send her a picture of Tazim too.”
Malik didn’t look convinced (in a good way). “Sure,” he said.
“Great, after we eat.”
--
There was a battle happening in his front yard. The sort of battle that had happened between him-and-Kadar since the day the ugly little baby rudely intruded into his life (unwanted and largely unwelcome). Sef, sweet and sunny in disposition, was playing with Tazim with the singular focus of a boy who had nothing better to do with his time than make his older brother miserable.
Darim was standing at the very edge of his own yard with his arms crossed in front of his chest and a death glower on his face. Every time the ball Sef was throwing for Tazim’s amusement rolled toward Darim, the boy would kick it hard enough to sail back across the yard and Sef had to run to catch it.
Malik had caught the general idea of the fight from the few brief exchanges. Sef wasn’t supposed to be in ‘strangers’ yards. Darim was responsible for his brother. Darim wanted to be inside where the electronics were and Sef wanted to punish his brother for reasons unknown. (Or Sef actually enjoyed playing with Tazim, which was possible but unlikely.) Malik was working through the stack of papers he had to bring home with him. Having anyone play with Sef was a welcome addition to his yard.
Then Kadar showed up. Kadar showed up with a sack of movies, a two liter of carbonated caffeine and a large pizza that smelled very strongly of feta cheese. Kadar (enigmatic even on the worst of days) went directly to Darim-the-sour-faced-brother. “Little brothers are the worst,” he said.
“Do you have one?” Darim asked.
“No, I am one. We are the worst and we are completely aware of it.” He was still holding the pizza up like a professional waiter with the soda tucked between his arm and his body. “What’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Darim said (far too quickly to be innocent). “He’s not allowed just to go to anyone’s yard that he wants and he knows it!”
“Shut up,” Sef said back. “Dad meant strangers. Malik’s been to our house and Dad likes him so it doesn’t count.”
Darim scoffed. Kadar elbowed him in the side (affectionately), “gross right? Your dad likes my brother.” Darim nodded and the two of them shared a comically overstated shudder of disgust. “But you did something. I don’t care what it was. But this reeks of spite and vengeance and the only way to defeat it is to eat this pizza with me. Come, Darim, let us sit on your porch and eat pizza without inviting our brothers.”
“I have to watch him,” Darim said with one hand flung out in the general direction of Sef.
“We can see him from your porch.” Kadar motioned him away with a tilt of his head and a wave of the deliciously hot pizza in front of his face. Darim was a fifteen year old boy of limited needs in life. He followed the smell of pizza and the promise of triumph over his kid brother.
Altair came home when the pizza was half gone and Kadar-and-Darim were laughing like fools on his front porch. Sef had fallen into rolling the ball to Tazim who had discovered worms in the dirt (and seemed to be trying to eat them). Altair stopped by his truck long enough to glance back and forth between their houses with a confused expression.
“Dad!” Darim shouted, “can Kadar come over for a while? He brought these cool movies and we were going to watch them all.”
“Who’s Kadar?”
Kadar waved at him. “Malik’s brother,” he said. “I’m seventeen.”
Altair sighed at this information and then looked at Sef, “have you eaten?”
“I don’t like pizza,” Sef said indignantly.
And Altair sighed again. Malik dropped the papers he’d been reviewing and tried very hard not to notice the dirt smeared all around his son’s mouth or try to figure out the likelihood that he had just eaten a worm. “I was going to make dinner, you could join me.”
The idiots on Altair’s porch started laughing to themselves.
Altair wavered back and forth for a second, clearly torn between the idea of leaving his fifteen year old unattended with an older boy and the promise of not having to cook. In the end he chose food. “Let me go change.” Darim and Kadar were already disappearing into the house with their sack of movies and their stupid laughs.
Sef stomped up to Malik’s porch and threw himself in the space next to him.
“If it helps, big brothers actually do care about little brothers.”
“Teenagers don’t care about anything,” Sef informed him. “I don’t ever want to be a teenager.”
Someone would have to break that sad news to Sef sooner or later. Malik patted him on the back and then went to get Tazim before he ate more dirt. Altair came back and Sef followed him in with that same frown of distaste stuck on his face. He flopped onto the couch and glowered at the empty space where the TV (he had yet to buy) would eventually be. Altair came into the kitchen with Malik. “Your brother isn’t going to seduce my kid, right?”
Malik laughed and didn’t mean to. (The idea was absurd, at best.) “Uh, no. Not unless Darim turns out to be a girl.”
“He’s not that,” Altair said. “Although I’m not sure you’re getting him back tonight. I walked past them and they were talking about marathoning some series of movies and ordering Chinese.”
“What movies?” Sef asked.
“You’re not going over there,” Altair said. He looked out through the doorway at his son, the cut of his eyebrows as serious as the tone of the words. “You just need to put that out of your head.”
“I just wanted to know what movies,” Sef grumbled.
Tazim (now finally clean) went over and pulled at Altair’s pants as he lifted his feet off the ground in an ongoing attempt to climb the man like a tree. Altair was a good sport about it considering he looked exhausted. He encouraged and helped and finally just reached down and picked Tazim up.
“Well when can I go back?” Sef demanded from the other room. “This place is boring.”
Altair frowned but Malik was grinning. “You can go back as long as you don’t want dinner and you go straight to your room.”
“Fine,” Sef said. He stomped across the floor to the front door.
Altair looked at Tazim who smiled with drool on his chin and fingers in his mouth. “Stay small forever,” he said to the boy. “I liked them when they were your size.”
--
There were three phone calls while he was at Malik’s. One from Darim asking if Sef was supposed to be there because he had just stomped into the house, slammed the door, said nothing and gone to his room in a huff. Altair assured him that it was fine.
Then there was one from Sef (about an hour later, when dinner was ready and Altair was watching Malik feed Tazim and thinking highly inappropriate thoughts about how attractive the man was) asking if he could get something to eat out of the kitchen and apologizing for his behavior and saying he wouldn’t try to watch the stupid movies. Altair told him he could and then asked him to give the phone to Darim to tell him it was also okay.
The third one was from Maria. “Your son called me,” she said. “You’ve been mistreating the baby again, Altair.”
Altair (at this point) was sitting on Malik’s couch while the man gave Tazim a quick bath and got him ready for bed. The excuse of staying for dinner had worn through forty-five minutes ago and he was just enjoying the quiet of the house. He said, “what have I done now?”
“He says that you sided with Darim and Darim was wrong. I’m not sure what Darim did but whatever it was, it was wrong. Also he says that some dumb kid is watching movies with Darim and you aren't there and they could be doing ‘literally anything’. So I asked him where you were and he said you were at the neighbor’s house. And I asked what you were doing there and he said, ‘eating or something, he’s been there for hours’.”
“Darim is watching movies with Kadar, Malik’s brother, and I was eating dinner because I was avoiding them. Did you buy the plane tickets yet?”
“I did. Do we know Kadar, Malik’s brother, well enough to leave him alone with our son or has your dick just decided to make the decisions for your brain?”
Altair pinched the bridge of his nose and huffed at her. Her laughed was a pretty-musical-thing from far-away. “Malik said he wasn’t going to impregnate our son and I honestly don’t care about anything else at the moment.”
“You have two children, Altair. I think you should know where they come from at this point. Boys cannot have babies.”
“No shit,” Altair said.
“If they could, I imagine you’d have a litter.” Oh-and wasn’t she so very brilliant in her wit and the utter joy with which she said the words. “Speaking of, how is seducing your baby neighbor going? Darim told me the other day you just stand in the backyard without your shirt on. I happen to know, reliably, that watching you mow the lawn has an aphrodisiac effect on people. Sef’s conception attests to this.”
Malik came back in the room (without his kid) and plopped down on the couch next to him. He smiled in a nonspecific way and Altair smiled back at him.
“I’m hanging up on you now,” he said. And then he did. The whole house was quiet save for the gentle murmuring of lullabies from Tazim’s room. Altair tucked his phone back in his pocket and enjoyed the quiet.
“Are you any good at putting beds together?” Malik asked. “I still haven’t gotten mine together.”
“I wouldn’t say I was good at it, but I can probably figure it out,” Altair said. Then they were getting up and going down the short, fat hallway to the back of the house where Malik’s bedroom (an impressive size to be sure) was. There were still boxes everywhere in the room, pulled open and half gutted for essentials while the majority of the stacks remained untouched. His bed was in pieces against a wall but his mattresses looked well-used in the few weeks that he’d been living there. “Do you have tools?”
“Do I need tools?” Malik asked.
Altair looked at the bed, all of the screws that held it together were still in their holes (probably best for not losing them in the move) but there was most definitely no way to put the thing back together as a cohesive whole without the use of some kind of tool. He nodded his head. “Yeah, you need something.”
“No I don’t have any tools,” Malik said.
Altair pulled his phone back out and called his beloved older son who bitched all the way through finding the toolbox with just the screwdrivers and pliers in it.
--
It was Kadar that brought him the tool box. He handed it to Malik with one of his hands on the doorjamb to his bedroom and the world’s most obnoxious expression. “Remember your kitchen while you’re fixing your bed, Malik.”
“Remember I’m still bigger than you and I can kick your ass,” Malik responded. He pulled the box out of Kadar’s hand and shooed him away before he could say anything further. Kadar left with a laugh.
“What about your kitchen?” Altair asked.
“Uh,” and why not share that particular stupidity with Altair who took his picture and had frequent ambiguous conversations with his ex-whatever-she-was about Malik. Darim seemed to have decided that the two of them were destined for one another and spent all of his time actively glowering at them about it. “Kadar said he’d paint the kitchen if I made it four weeks without sleeping with you.”
“That is an excellent deal,” Altair said. “I hate painting.”
That wasn’t the point of the bet. Malik was going to tell him that but Altair straightened up from where he’d been laying the bed pieces out, stepped over one of the long sides and closed his hand around the tool box as if he just meant to take it from him. Then he ducked forward and kissed him and it was a gloriously-wet-and-welcome thing. Soft at first and then Malik pulled at his neck and pressed back against his lips. The tool box got thrown sideways and Altair was kissing him intently with hands on his face and a tongue in his mouth. Malik was fine-with-that, pulling at his arms (his incredible fucking arms) and crushing them closer together just to get a chance to feel the wall of muscle that Altair’s body seemed to be comprised of. He was six-seconds from stripping them both naked when Altair pulled back.
“Four weeks is like next Thursday or something isn’t it?”
Malik wasn’t even sure what day it was. “Uh, yeah? I think.”
Altair was looking at him, the disheveled set of his clothes and then at his face with a completely pleased look. “Your kitchen needs new paint,” he pointed out.
“Not really,” Malik assured him.
Oh and Altair laughed. Then he kissed him again and it was far sweeter and less urgent than the first. “We should put your bed together. Then I have to go home before Sef calls his Mother to tell on me again.”
“About what?”
“Maria got pregnant at fifteen,” Altair said. “My Grandma said she ‘trusted us’ to behave ourselves and she let Maria come over after school all the time and then we discovered sex and then we had a kid and rest of my teenage years were spent arguing over who had to change his diaper. The only binding contract we ever made was that our sons wouldn’t be left unattended at fifteen.”
“Ah,” Malik said. “Fifteen?”
“Yeah,” Altair said. “It did not go over well with the parents either. Maria’s Mom and Dad kicked her out and my Grandmother let her stay but we had to get jobs to pay rent and take care of the baby. And we had to finish school or we got kicked out of her house. Not exactly the life I want my sons to have.”
“My girlfriend got pregnant and my Mom cried for three days and then called a lawyer to see what they’d have to do to get full custody of the baby before he was born. I had to fight my Mom to keep my own child.” Then he looked at the bed, “so what should I do to help?”
“Hold things,” Altair said. Then he set to work. (And looked very nice doing it.)